Walk Away From The Virus

There is little good to be said about the Covid-19 pandemic — it has ruined lives and permanently STAINED our country, in fact, the whole world. Yet if there is anything at all to profit from the deadly virus it is that some people are being drawn closer together. While all civility appears absent from our public interactions, oddly enough some sort of authentic human yearning seems to be growing in spite of the scourge — a yearning to interact as human beings as we have done for ten thousand years. The morning walk is an example.
You meet the nicest people on our wide boulevards in the quiet early slice of the day just after dawn before the leaf blowers and monstrous garbage trucks, chainsaws and sirens and screaming motorcycles ruin all karma. It is about the time the songbirds rehearse their new delights. Many, yes many people step out around this time to thrill to the trills and chirps floating and echoing through the cool of fading night. In this beastly July it will be 105 before the day is through, and there will be untold insults to our better angels, and hard words will be spoken frequently and in earnest across the land, new and foolish rules will constrict our lives, and we will have only resentment to show for it. So we walk. Everyone in the neighborhood, it seems, now takes a stroll shortly after the sun is up. And many of the neighbors —who knew? —are entirely decent individuals — some of them have learned to smile during our sweltering-in-place. Some have even learned to nod or parse out a “good morning” while seemingly in a rush to scurry around the corner or up the hill.

You encounter roughly the same collection of walkers from morning to morning. In some sort of coronavirus shorthand, nearly all of them become vastly more interesting than just “The O’Donnels” from two houses down the street. Without a mask it’s easy to share a greeting and a smile — often one party or the other will venture a factoid or two: “Yah, the kids are fine…you?” Or “tomatoes are really sumthin’ this year, we planted Early Girl and Beefsteak in March. You?” Morning dialog is exchanged without breaking stride of course or losing momentum — never stopping to converse like normal people because that would surely require suiting-up in an appropriate mask. This is simply not the venue for masks! Sure, everyone seems to carry one in case Gavin is watching, but the idea here is to forego the worry and woe about that damn germ and enjoy a few minutes of fresh air and peace. Take for example the lowly artichoke plant somebody stuck in the ground over on Elm Street. For days and days the bulb grew and matured unmolested. Everybody watched. I was just sure that some fool would lop that thing off, boil it, and serve it up with drawn butter. In this season of critical shortages — a delicacy like artichokes or handy wipes and toilet paper — is hard to come by. But alas, it survived and produced a lovely purple bloom for all of us walkers to enjoy.

There are some characters on this route. The old babushka — the very old babushka who, ‘though she came to America during the Eisenhower administration, still utters not one syllable of English. Older than Siberia, she shuffles for miles every morning wearing the same threadbare dress and ancient scarf. “Good morning, grandma,” we shout across the blacktop. She smiles, mumbles something in Russian that sounds friendly enough but could very well mean anything from “good morning to you, as well, honey” to “we should have won the Cold War and next time we will.”

The once-dapper old gent found shuffling along in slipshod clothes and overused shoes. And an unlit cigar. Held elegantly in his left hand. A Corona. A long Corona brought to America by Ummbaerti and Sons of Havana, Cuba. And held delicately in the left hand of the once-dapper fellow who never lights it. Winston Churchill was dapper and a walker and a thinker and he often carried a cigar. The difference being that he smoked his cigars and enjoyed them until the day he died.

The gang of six who take social distancing far too seriously — spread across the residential streets like a marauding army — whose conversation is never to be interrupted for any reason and none of whom will yield more than a centimeter of their imaginary lane to any approaching innocent. Thus was invented the crazy dance whereupon otherwise law-abiding walkers learn to careen from curb to curb in anticipation of avoiding an ugly confrontation fifty yards down the street.

    My partner in this website is a walker and a damn good one. Dennis Hart was always at his very best when applying a bit of shoe leather to a story. So was the finest newspaper reporter this city has ever seen. George Hostetter was famous far and wide for walking miles and miles to and from work at The Fresno Bee for over thirty years. Not only did he walk absolutely everywhere but he loved doing it and picked up litter and kudos and conversation and “scoops” along the way. We shall miss George Hostetter.

Morning walkers will do almost anything to assuage the feelings of certain newly-minted members of the walking class. Like careening from curb to curb, as just mentioned, in hopes of avoiding that ugly thing coming up. Train wrecks are especially tragic when afoot. Bumping into something in the night nettled one of the best radio journalists of all time. In one of his first broadcasts from London during World War Two, Edward R. Murrow explained how to avoid bumping into a cow on a dark London street during the Blitz:

“I don’t know how you feel about the people who smoke cigarettes, but I like them, particularly at night in London. That small dull, red glow is a very welcome sight. It prevents collisions, makes it unnecessary to heave to, until you locate the exact position of those vague voices in the darkness. One night several years ago I walked bang into a cow, and since then I’ve had a desire for man and beast to carry running lights on dark nights. They can’t do that in London these nights, but the cigarettes are a good substitute.”